which astounded the lady. He said the Queen owed him the first
instalment of the money for the diamond necklace; that she had bought it
after all; that the story about the Sultana was a lie told by her
directions to hide the fact; since the Queen meant to pay by
instalments, and did not wish the purchase known. And Boehmer said, she
had employed the Cardinal de Rohan to buy the necklace for her, and it
had been delivered to him for her, and by him to her.

Now the Queen, as Madame Campan knew very well, had always strongly
disliked this Cardinal; he had even been kept from attending at Court in
consequence, and she had not so much as spoken to him for years. And so
Madame Campan told Boehmer, and further she told him he had been imposed
upon.

"No," said the man of sparklers decisively, "It is you who are deceived.
She is decidedly friendly to the cardinal. I have myself the documents
with her own signature authorizing the transaction, for I have had to
let the bankers see them in order to get a little time on my own
payments."

Here was a monstrous mystification for the lady of honor, who told
Boehmer to instantly go and see his official superior, the chief of the
king's household. She herself being very soon afterwards summoned to the
Queen's presence, the affair came up, and she told the Queen all she
knew about it. Marie Antoinette was profoundly distressed by the evident
existence of a great scandal and swindle, with which she was plainly to
be mixed up through the forged signatures to the documents which Boehmer
had been relying on.

Now for the Cardinal.

Louis de Rohan, a scion of the great house of Rohan, one of the proudest
of France, was descended of the blood royal of Brittany; was a handsome,
proud, dissolute, foolish, credulous, unprincipled noble, now almost
fifty years old, a thorough rake, of large revenues, but deeply in debt.
He was Peer of France, Archbishop of Strasburg, Grand Almoner of France,
Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Commendator of the benefice of
St. Wast d'Arras, said to be the most wealthy in Europe, and a
Cardinal. He had been ambassador at Vienna a little after Marie
Antoinette was married to the Dauphin, and while there had taken
advantage of his official station to do a tremendous quantity of
smuggling. He had also further and most deeply offended the Empress
Maria Theresa, by outrageous debaucheries, by gross irreligion, and
above all by a rather flat but in effect